By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

It’s like wandering through the mall. That’s the landscape of the evangelical church today in America. In our part of the country we have Nordstroms and Macys and Marshals and Sears. These are the economic pillars of the mall, the anchor stores. Surrounding these commercial behemoths is a myriad of lesser lights: bookstores, jewelry stores, electronic stores, game arcades, build-your-own-teddy bear shops, the food court.

And we have our mega-churches, churches with multi-million dollar budgets that shore up huge bureaucracies of pastors and support staff, which, in turn, facilitate layers of programs designed to meet every conceivable need of the consuming public. The vision statements of these organisms are now large enough, apparently, to encompass the future of entire countries in Africa. For better or worse, these mega-organizations now anchor our movement.

As I work with churches and pastors, I am increasingly finding that the real impact of these organizations is not limited to their obvious assets. Not only have they become bigger-than-life in real terms; they have become bigger-than-life in our minds and hearts. Whether we want to admit it or not, the mega-church has become the standard by which we define success.

It’s annoying, isn’t it? We have all heard the statistics; it seems like 50% of church attendees in America attend about 5% of our churches. And yet, in the back of our minds as pastors, as we put our new fall programs together or drag our congregations through another envisioning process or consider a new evangelism campaign for our churches, there exist the notion that this just might be the year that God does in our church what He has done in what is described on the back cover of books written by one of a few meg-pastors.

But, the cold hard reality is that for most of us in ministry, we are called to manage a Lids Store or a Hallmark card shop on the far end of the corridor, not one of the anchor stores. How do we live with this reality while seeking God’s best for the place God has called us to serve? How do we long earnestly for growth and change and renewal in settings resistant to growth and change and renewal?

Several years ago, I had an extended yearlong conversation with fifteen pastors from mainline churches around New England on the nature of renewal within their theologically compromised contexts. We met monthly to discuss what it would take to change the climate and attitudes of congregations in need of spiritual renewal.

After our yearlong conversation, we summarized our time together into sixteen precepts that describe what it takes to turn a church around. I have wondered more recently whether many of these precepts relate equally to small, struggling evangelical churches as well. Here they are:

16 Precepts for Turning a Church Around

1. “Called to obedience, not success.”

2. “Longevity matters.”

3. “There will be a point of crisis. Get through it.”

4. “Look for the remnant.”

5. “Old guard, new guard: It’s a matter of critical mass.”

6. “What’s more important: bylaws or vision statement?”

7. “Leadership is generational.”

8. “De-code the battle: personality or theology.”

9. “Conserve your energy” or “Choose your battles carefully.”

10. “Finding the thread that leads to renewal in YOUR church.”

11. “Sometimes the point of absolute death is the point of opportunity.”

12. “Wheat and Tares: Evangelism within.”

13. “Patience, patience, (gasp), patience.”

14. “Renewal: A never-ending story.”

15. “Know when to leave.”

16. “It’s not ultimately you. It’s the Spirit!”

As I have overheard pastors talk about their churches in more recent years, I would add to the above sixteen the further observation that churches are oh-so-very-fragile creatures. In the current marketplace economy of congregational life in America, I am continuously amazed at how quickly churches can loose their momentum. Whether through conflict or through more subtle attrition, seemingly vital churches loose their vitality. It is only through God’s grace and power that our churches--flawed as they may be—become renewable resources for His greater glory.

Silent Night

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Silent Night, Holy Night

All is calm, all is bright…

It is a beloved, and lovely, song…but I do wonder just how silent things were in Bethlehem that night. Singing choirs of angels, singing in exaltation, would presumably be pretty noisy, especially if they were joined by all the citizens of heaven above; you couldn’t help but hark. Back in the manger, baby Jesus may have been meek and mild, but I don’t think that would stop him screaming his little lungs out as he gasped his first breaths of air. Mary was likely pretty animated herself as she labored to push out her first-born. And while I cannot claim any real knowledge of animal husbandry, I would not be surprised if the oxen and sheep and donkeys made a racket themselves in response to all the busy-ness of the birth.

But if the silence of the song doesn’t quite work at the literal level, it does harbor a profound theological truth. Amidst all our work and worry and words, Christmas is a time to sit still. We exhaust ourselves all year with writing and theorizing and speculating about the problems of the world and how we can solve them; now at last we can be silent and hear God’s Answer.

“Do not be afraid”

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology and
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling at the Charlotte campus

Recently, I started attending a Bible study on the book of Esther. We were studying Chapter 4, where Esther responds to Mordecai’s request that she approach the king by telling him that if anyone approaches the king without being summoned, they will be killed. The discussion in the group turned towards the idea that Esther was probably afraid to approach the King. Someone said that the most frequent command given in Scripture is "do not be afraid." That certainly seems to be the case in the Gospel narratives of Jesus birth: when the angel approaches Zechariah, the angel says. "Do not be afraid" (Luke 1:13). When the angel approached Mary, he said the same thing, "do not be afraid" (Luke 1:30). When the angel appeared to the shepherds, Luke says they were terribly frightened and the angel said to them. "Do not be afraid" (Luke 2:10).

As I sat in the Bible study and heard this comment about the command to not be afraid, the psychotherapist in me sat up and took notice. We do not choose our emotions. Emotions are responses to our interpretations of events and experiences. "Emotions just are; it's what we do with them that matters" is something I say frequently to clients. Because Jesus commands us to love, I conclude that love is not just a feeling, but rather something we can choose. We can choose to put someone else's needs ahead of our own, to work for the benefit of another, for the welfare of another. So what does it mean that the most frequent command in Scripture is to not be afraid?

There must be a sense in which "do not be afraid." refers to something more than emotion. One of the other women in the Bible study commented that we are also told to fear the Lord, which led to a discussion about how fear in this context is reverence or awe, or to make God be the reference point, the most important person in our lives. So perhaps, we are commanded to not be afraid of anything but God because God wants us to see him as the center, and him only.

In the Gospel narratives of Jesus birth, the angels were bringing “good news of a great joy” to each person to whom they appeared: that God was coming in the flesh to redeem his people. The incarnation is an awesome thing: Divinity, the infinite almighty eternal God, took on our finite, limited human nature. "Vastness confined in the womb of a maid." If this God is for us, we need never be afraid of anything again.

Miracle Baby: the Wonder of the Incarnation

By John Jefferson Davis
Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics

My wife Robin and I just returned recently from Washington, DC and a visit to get acquainted with our new grandson, Isaiah John Tobin, born November 14, 2009, weighing 7 lbs. 14 oz. ( and, coincidentally, Isaiah 7:14: “…. God with us”). Holding my new grandson as a proud grandfather (my third grandchild), I was so thankful to God for the birth of this beautiful new healthy child, and reflected on the amazing process of human embryonic development in the womb and live birth – things that we can easily take for granted because they seem so “normal”. The Old Testament Isaiah spoke about the birth of a “miracle baby” (Is.7:14), but there is something well-nigh miraculous about the formation and birth of any human baby, when seen in the light of modern science and embryology.

In his fascinating book The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, Gerald Schroeder reminds us that a normal adult human body contains 75 trillion cells, and all 75 trillion were grown from and encoded genetically in a single fertilized egg cell in our mother’s womb. One cell divides to become two … four … eight …. sixteen … thirty-two …. sixty-four … and so on, all the way to 75 trillion cells – and these cells must appear at the right time, in the right order, in the right spatial configuration, so that brain cells do not appear in our toes or fingernail cells in our liver, and so on. There are 3.5 billion base pairs to specify the human genome in each cell, and this genetic “script” is packed into a space in the cell nucleus that measures only 1/1000 of an inch in diameter – an amazing feat of divinely designed “nanotechnology.”

Each time one of our cells divides, the amount of genetic information that has to be copied without error is like a person xeroxing ten 400 page books per minute for ten hours - and this from the time of conception until we die. As one biologist observed, the process of human embryological development staggers the imagination: the human embryo is like a machine that can not only build itself, but has the “intelligence” to be able to make a copy of itself as well.

At this Christmas season, when we again remember the “Word made flesh” (John 1:14), we can again in all humility reflect on the miracle of the Incarnation: the Author of the genetic code became a zygote, then an embryo, and finally, a 75 trillion-celled human being – himself living through, for our benefit, the amazing process that he himself had designed. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift: Joy to the world … the Incarnate Lord has come!

On Advent and Albino Hunting in East Africa

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Have you heard or read the horrifying story about albino hunting in east Africa (posted 11/27/09)? I read the story on the CNN website today (you can also read about it here) and have since been thinking about what it tells us about fallen humanity and about Advent. Here are just the first three paragraphs from the CNN story:

As many as 10,000 albinos are in hiding in east Africa over fears that they will be dismembered and their body parts sold to witchdoctors, the Red Cross said in a recent report.

The killings of albinos in Burundi and Tanzania, who are targeted because their body parts are believed to have special powers, have sparked fears among the population in the two countries, the report said.

Body parts of albinos are sought in some regions of Africa because they are believed to bring wealth and good luck. Attackers chop off limbs and pluck out organs to sell to dealers, who in turn sell them to witchdoctors.

What a horrific reminder of the wickedness that can be found in the human heart and leading to the most inhuman treatment of people created in God’s image. Human beings are willing to slaughter other human beings out of the most perverse and corrupt miscalculation about what is in their best interest. Of course disastrous miscalculation of what is in one’s best interest goes all the way back to the origin of sin. “Eating from that tree will be good for you! It’ll make you more like God!” If only such corruption of the human heart were limited to the most widely recognized manifestations of blatant wickedness as albino hunting, or were only found in strange and distant places like east Africa, and not clearly seen in my own heart (and yours!)!

I can more easily point the finger at people who unnecessarily abandon their fetuses, or infants, or grown children rather than making the sacrifices it would take to raise them. Or at those who are more concerned about how healthcare reform might negatively impact their health insurance in any way than they are about the millions who have been left without the benefit of any health insurance. Or all you other people who have ways (and fine-sounding rationalizations) for putting your needs and interests ahead of those of others’. But the same sin seems quite at home in my own heart. I may not be hunting albinos for their body parts, but I have more subtle ways of valuing my own happiness and prosperity over the wellbeing of others. And many of my ways are at least as culturally acceptable in my culture as albino hunting is (evidently) in albino-hunting subcultures….

What does any of this have to do with Advent? Everything, of course. First of all, Christ is the only perfect and pure model of what it means to put other people’s needs above his own (see, of course, Philippians 2:3-11). He became human and sacrificed himself so that we might find true life through his (true) death and resurrection. And his death and resurrection bring life, real and transformed life, that leads more and more people to tend less and less to feed (or, to use Paul’s metaphor, to “sow to please”) their sinful nature (cf. Galatians 6:8), thanks to the life of Christ that is in them by the indwelling Holy Spirit (Galatians 2:20; 4:6).

Christ has come not only to model a different way of living as a human being and to bring forgiveness and salvation to those who, like us, were albino hunters of their own kind, but also to transform us into people through whom the love and righteousness of Christ might be seen.

Through our union with Christ the albino-hunter in each of us has been nailed to the cross, crucified with Christ, so that we are no longer to be slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness.

Now that I have used those poor albinos as part of an illustration of the ravages of sin and as part of a metaphor for our own sinfulness, I am tempted to leave them behind. They have served my needs and purposes for today. I don’t suppose they would feel any better knowing I was able to exploit them for the sake of writing an on-line faculty forum…. Their suffering goes on. For them, “physical survival is a desperate struggle.”

What might I do (and you), as a follower of Christ, to help those terrorized people, threatened with horrific violence? We can read more about it here and then decide the best way to act. My prayer is that followers of Christ will find concrete ways of demonstrating Christ’s own commitment to those in such desperate need. As the hymn says, Christ “comes to make His blessings flow. Far as the curse is found.” May those blessings flow to the albinos of east Africa this advent season.

Friendship of a Pastor

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

It is quite amazing the things you realize at a funeral. There we all were, almost three hundred friends and family members, all of us there to honor my father who had just passed away a couple of days earlier. They came from all over the Midwest. The older folks, representing his five full-time and several interim pastorates sitting in the front rows to hear better, were the most conspicuous.

We laid my father to rest, and in doing so, we were really laying to rest sixty years of faithful ministry. It was my task to eulogize him for the family. As I looked out over the mourners that day, and particularly those tired souls in the front rows, I couldn’t help but think of the kinds of relationships that were being represented there before me.

How had they perceived my father? There my father was before us, first, seen through the eyes of a wife, certainly the most intimate of the relationships being represented. And, then, there were the four grown boys, less intimate but equally loving. There were four daughters-in-law. How did daughters tethered to this man all these years out of marital pledge rather than blood kinship view this man and his life? There were plenty of nephews and nieces who largely saw him past his prime. There were only a few of his peers left who observed him in his prime—no siblings, but a few brother and sister-in-laws. And finally, with the exception of the church custodian and the ladies who served lunch that day, all of the rest sitting there saw this man through the lens of his ministry amongst them as their one time pastor.

Of this latter group, I couldn’t help thinking of one of dad’s most memorable sayings while I was growing up: “My best friends are ex-parishioners.” Certainly he never made this little adage public, but there was something in dad’s past that always made him wary of getting too close to those he served. Perhaps it was a piece of pastoral wisdom that he learned in his seminary days from the forties.

Whatever it was, in hindsight I think this self-imposed ministerial convention left my dad privately lonely. Publicly, no one would have guessed it. Dad was a big, gregarious man. Our home was a big, hospitable place. Our family life was cluttered with people from all walks of life. Dad’s life was filled with relationships, but at the end of the day, few of those relationships could easily fall under the category of friendship, narrowly defined. Most of his friends sat outside the church door, at least of the church he was currently serving. Only when he left a church would he express friendship openly to certain special people.

The wisdom of this little saying of dad’s can easily be disputed? Is it wise for pastors to nurture friendships within their own congregations? If not, are pastors, then, doomed to a life of solitude? Aside for his or her family, where else is the source of community for those who are to oversee community to come from? What was dad so fearful of? And, what advice should young pastors be given as they enter into a profession that is enormously challenging, potentially filled with conflict, and often lonely?

Mick Jagger, Choir Boy

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

The title is, as they say, a literal fact. While it might be hard to imagine, the Rolling Stones front man did indeed sing in the church choir in his youth. I learned this the other day while perusing According to the Rolling Stones while waiting for my son to finish his music lesson. The book also featured some rather endearing reflections from Jagger’s bandmate Keith Richards on his own early musical experiences. The young Stone-to-be apparently spent much of his boyhood surreptitiously searching for primitive rock-n-roll on his transistor radio. He would hear half of Heartbreak Hotel…the signal would fail…and he would be heartbroken himself, yearning to hear the rest of whatever was troubling Elvis.

Now, in light of their subsequent less-than-innocent behavior, it would be easy to laugh these memories off. We might conjure up images of a young robed Mick belting out Jumpin’ Jack Flash at St. Peter’s Evensong service, or raise questions as to what else Keith might have been up to behind his parents’ backs beyond illicit listening to Chuck Berry. But there is something touching about seeing these notorious rakes as at least semi-innocent youths discovering the joy of music. We are so accustomed to their bad-boy rock and roll image we forget that they started off as ordinary kids.

And it made me wonder if a part of God’s astounding ability to forgive lies in the persistence of his memory. Throughout the Old Testament, God rehearses the story of Israel, nowhere more pointedly than in Ezekiel 16 (a passage, as it happens, with imagery as graphic as anything the Stones came up with). It is all here: Israel’s humble origins, God’s grace in the Exodus, Israel’s relentless pursuit of foreign gods, and the devastating judgment that ensues. One might imagine that God would completely wash his hands of this sinful people, yet in the end he speaks a word of hope: “… yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant” (Ezek. 16:60, ESV).

Grizzled veterans of various sorts often like to weigh in with the phrase, “I’ve seen it all.” Well, God really has seen it all. What is remarkable is that his relentless recall has not left him embittered and hopeless; rather it moves him to compassion as he remembers how things once were, and how they might be again. I imagine it would give him great Satisfaction to one day see Mick Jagger back in the church choir.